things i didn't like about howl's moving castle
the ghibli people went for an almost-different aesthetic than usual, the different aspect being the 'mechanical-european-steamboy' stuff, and the familiar aspect being...everything else. they used all these bright colors for the scenes in the cities, but they didn't seem to be chosen very carefully and seemed so out of place in one of miyazaki's movies. but the thing that bugged me the most was that with the exception of the fire demon calcifer,(and this is sort of a generous exception) the characters, especially howl himself, refuse to be all that interesting. howl didn't do all that much besides look pretty and save the day and be mysterious, and the main character's curse, the basic premise for the entire movie, is clumsily handled, her age keeps fluctuating for no discernable reason. something is going on during the second half of this movie that's very hard to explain. it sort of begins to lack coherence, or any sense of...drive? it didn't seem to have any of the emotional instensity (if you can even call it intensity) of spirited away, and there wasn't any of that sense of build from spirited away. i think they basically totally run out of ideas at the end, if you see it you'll know what i mean.
i don't know. it wasn't as bad as i'm making it sound, probably, but i was fairly disappointed. obviously.